Samatar, Sofia
Entry updated 29 April 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1971- ) US academic and author whose Olondra sequence beginning with A Stranger in Olondria (2013) is a richly and densely imagined fantasy, set mostly in the eponymous empire. The protagonist's irruption into complex world as a trader (see Mysterious Stranger) becomes deep immersion in experiences half veridical, half Memory. This novel won a World Fantasy Award; and in 2014 Samatar received the John W Campbell Award for best new author. A second volume, The Winged Histories (2016), is broken into interlocked stories through which Olondria can be seen as a constantly harvestable text, which is to say a kind of deep Library.
Samatar is of direct sf interest for The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain (2024), a condensedly told novella set on a vast class-ridden Space Habitat-like Starship occupied in the Space-Opera task of mining planets for their minerals. The young protagonist, a low-caste dweller in the lower depths, a "Hold" which conveys a sensation of being literally Underground, is selected for higher education (see Education in SF), his University Scholarship for the Chained manumitting him upwards into the light. The more he advances in learning, the more he learns the interstices of the cage in which his life may be led (see Slavery). Barring a sequel, any light that shines at the end of the tale seems allegorical. [JC]
Sofia Samatar
born Indiana: 24 October 1971
works (selected)
series
Olondria
- A Stranger in Olondria (Easthampton, Massachusetts: Small Bear Press, 2013) [Olondria: hb/Kathleen Jennings]
- The Winged Histories (Easthampton, Massachusetts: Small Bear Press, 2016) [Olondria: hb/Kathleen Jennings]
individual works
- The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain (New York: Tordotcom, 2024) [pb/]
collections and stories
- Tender (Easthampton, Massachusetts: Small Bear Press, 2017) [coll: hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry